


Michiru's First Vision

by AwashSquid



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, contains descriptions of drowning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 10:32:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13809357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwashSquid/pseuds/AwashSquid
Summary: The first time that Michiru saw death, she was seven years old.





	Michiru's First Vision

The first time that Michiru saw death, she was seven years old.

She was on a private beach, as her mother refused to sun amongst the “rabble.” Her father was on his cell phone negotiating some contract, unable as always to focus on anything unrelated to the company and its holdings. Her mother’s dark sunglasses covered her eyes, but the looseness of her grip on her e-reader betrayed that she was dozing off in the hot sun.

Michiru had been warned that she was only allowed to go so far as the very edge of the ocean. She had nodded her assent silently before slowly walking to where the waves just began to lap at the shore and sat primly in the sand, allowing the cool water to lap at her feet. Her nanny watched from some distance back, trying to skirt the careful balance of supervision without hovering.

The wet sand slipped through her fingers as she absentmindedly moved her hands along it, pausing on the occasional smoothness of a shell. She looked at the white froth of the sea as it encircled her feet and smiled at the sensation of the foaming bubbles popping against her skin. Her eyes wandered upwards to the waves and the sea beyond, that great stretch of blue that seemed to expand eternally into the sky.

That sky, which had been a beautiful clear blue, turned quickly into a rancid gray, the sun’s light red and sickly instead of the bright yellow it had been. The light breeze heightened into a harsh wind, thrashing her hair against her face and whipping tendrils harshly against her cheeks. The ocean turned black, as if someone had emptied a massive ink bottle into it, and the waves began to increase, the small roils of the ocean expanding into towering pillars of water that crashed against one another. And yet, despite the tsunami that was unfurling before her, the world had gone utterly silent. She did not try to scream—some part of her knew that it would be no good in this deafened world. She tried to turn around, tried to get up and run, but her body was frozen, her limbs seemingly glued to the sand as it turned cold beneath her. Her eyes darted over the horrific landscape as a massive wave rose from the sea, and she took a deep breath before it overcame her.

It was somehow even quieter in the ocean’s embrace than it had been on that silent shore; here, the absolute lack of sound was more oppressive, and she could feel the ocean in her ears pushing hard enough that her heartbeat started to pulse and thunder, a noise that wasn’t _heard_ so much as _felt_ as it reverberated in her bones. She opened her eyes and saw only blackness, and the salt stung at the exposed tissue so that she was forced to close them again.

The waves tossed her head-over-heels multiple times, and she thought that even if she had known how to swim she had no way of telling which way she should go. Her arms and legs struck out in blind panic, trying to grab onto anything she could, but all that she found was water slipping through her fingers like a fine silk.

She felt herself somersaulting once more in the water and her fingers grazed the bottom, the sand a welcome coarseness to her senses. The water was so rough that she had no way to orient herself to push off of the bottom, so she blindly tried to swim the opposite way, limbs flailing desperately in the water. Another wave came and she could not keep straight; Michiru felt herself be thrown again, and this time, her head hit off of the bottom with a _whack_ that was so hard it was almost audible. The breath she had been so carefully holding was expelled all at once with the shock of the pain pounding through her head. 

Her eyes snapped open—but this time, she did not see only blackness. There was a light shining through the churning ocean, something white and pure shimmering in the dark. Michiru had no strength left, but somehow she found it in herself to move, however clumsily, towards the light. She kicked and moved her arms like she had seen others do, and she found herself drawing closer. She kept kicking even as her head screamed from pain and lack of oxygen, even as her limbs grew heavier and heavier in the water. She tried to move until she was almost there, and, her body unable to continue any longer, she felt her eyes close and the world faded to black once more.

\--

When Michiru awoke and she opened her eyes, she was nearly blinded by the sheer amount of _white_ in her vision. She blinked a few times to get used to the brightness of her surroundings, and slowly she realized that she was in a hospital. She tried to move her head but stopped when she realized how painful it was. 

The doctor came by once a nurse noticed she was awake and explained that she had a mild concussion, but nothing that a period of rest wouldn’t clear up. It was strange, he said, that there hadn’t been any water in her lungs, especially considering how long she had been underneath the waves. They rationalized it as she must have been able to sneak in a few breaths between the buffeting of the waves, but Michiru knew better than that.

The ocean was an untamable thing, placidly alluring at its gentlest but able to turn into destruction at a moment’s notice. A childish part of her felt afraid of its capacity for ruin, but there was something at the core of her, something deep within, that knew the ocean would not betray her. There was somehow a mutual respect there that she would not fully understand until later, a mutual understanding of one another that made her recognize that she was never truly in danger.

She told no one of her vision; even as a child, she knew that her parents wouldn’t take kindly to such talk. She had simply been too close and a wave had pulled her under. Her parents were concerned, of course, but it was the sort of concern that her father had displayed when one of his buildings was robbed, the kind of worry that is detached from any true feeling and is quickly mended once all is established as well.

Her mother was surprised when she asked for swimming lessons, a slight raise of her perfect eyebrows displaying her emotions in the subtle way that most wouldn’t notice but Michiru had come to understand and emulate. “I don’t want to be afraid,” Michiru added, and her mother then nodded her assent. Michiru thought she saw a slight smile in the corners of her eyes though, probably some small sense of pride that her daughter would not allow herself to fall prey to fear so easily.

But Michiru knew that the ocean was not what was meant to be feared. Whatever horrid, dead Earth she had seen, however— _that_ was what would keep her awake at night, scribbling pictures with her fine pastels and then hiding them under the mattress, grey skies with red suns leering at her when she closed her eyes to sleep. Somehow, she knew that this wasn’t a normal child’s fear: what she saw was _real_. 

And she knew that, no matter how much she resisted or tried to ignore it, one day, she would have to fight to stop her visions from becoming reality.


End file.
